Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine, a tell-all entertainment rag in Los Angeles. He's young, curious, and pushy, with a nose for news that gets him close to the "in people" and even closer to real trouble. A party prank scavenger hunt, devised by his publisher, gets Jimmy face time with Garret Walsh, a has-been director fresh out of prison for murdering an ing nue starlet. Needing to "borrow" an Academy Award statue for the scavenger hunt, Jimmy goes to Walsh's ramshackle trailer and gets caught up in his attempt to break back into the biz with a script he calls "the most dangerous screenplay in Hollywood." Two weeks later, Walsh is floating dead in a nearby koi pond, and Jimmy questions the police report that lists the death as accidental. On the pretext of researching an article on Walsh's rise and fall, Jimmy tails the police and does quite a bit of investigating on his own. His publisher is indulgent, sensing a tantalizing lead article for his next issue until this "scavenger hunt" turns deadly and Jimmy ends up at the top of someone else's list.
